There's one more kind of language that we need to discuss because it's also used to
stop the skeptical regress. Much like assuring and guarding and
discounting. This language is evaluative.
Just imagine that a politician says, you ought to support my health care plan
because it would be good for the country. What is the word good?
Doing here. Now some philosophers are going to tell
you that the word good is just a way of expressing your emotions or maybe telling
you what to do. So the politician is saying, yeah for my
healthcare plan or telling you in an imperative form, you ought ta support my
healthcare plan, but that can't really be the whole story.
Because when someone says, yay, Duke, like I do when I cheer for the Duke team.
First of all, I'm not saying that the team is good.
I might cheer for the Duke team even when I know they're not good.
And secondly, you can't ask me why, if I go yeah Duke.
It doesn't make any sense if you turn to me and say but why?
Why yeah, Duke? It doesn't make any sense.
So merely to express your emotions with something like yeah, Duke is very
different from saying Duke has a good team and saying yeah, for my healthcare
plan is very different from saying that the healthcare plan is good for the
country. Similarly, if I say I don't like fish, so
we shouldn't have fish for dinner. Well, I don't really owe you a reason.
I can just say, I just don't like the taste of fish,.
end of story. Leave me alone.
I don't know your reason for why I don't like fish.
I just don't but if I say, it's immoral to eat fish. It's wrong to eat fish.
You ought not to eat fish, it's a very different story.
Now I owe you a reason. If I say it's immoral to eat fish, I need
to say what's immoral about it? I need to point to some feature of eating
fish that makes it immoral. I can't just use that evaluative language
without some kind of reason to back it up.
That would be illegitimate. So, what that shows is that merely
expressing preferences is very different from making an evaluation and saying that
something is good or bad or right or wrong, or immoral or moral.
And one way to capture this feature evaluative language is to interpret a
word like good as, meet the standards, and bad as, violates the standards.
Notice it's very vague, 'cause it doesn't tell you what the standards are.
And those standards will change from one context to another.
If you're talking about a good painting, the standards of a good painting are
different from when you're talking about, say, a good investment.
Where the standards are going to be completely different from the aesthetic
case. So if we interpret good as, meets the
standards, and we say my healthcare program is good for the country, then
that means it meets the standards for what will make the country function, in a
certain way. Whereas, if we say eating fish is
immoral, what we're saying is that eating fish violates a certain kind of standard.
And more specifically, it's a moral standard.
That's why we use the word immoral. So we can interpret this language in
terms of meat eater violating standards, and then to get the reason why it's good
or bad or right or wrong or moral or immoral.
We can cite the standard and apply it to the case in order to give a reason for
why the evaluation holds. But now here's the trick,
when we call it good we don't say what the standards are.
We leave that up to the context to specify what kind of standards we're
talking about. So, it's kind of like assuring, when you
say, I assure you, and you might cite some authority or tell them that you do
have some reason and you don't tell them what the reason is.
When you call it good, you say it does meet the standards, but you don't say
what the standards are. So by, alluding to the standards without
actually laying them out. You have made your claim a little more
defensible. Because if you laid out the standards,
they might be questionable and your audience would know exactly what to
questions and what to deny, and how to object.
But if you simply say it's good, and all you're saying is, it meets the standards.
Then you've avoided an objection, and made your premise more defensible.
And that's how this type of evaluative language might help to stave off the
skeptical regress. And here's another way evaluation can
help. We don't always have to agree about what
the standards are. Suppose we're driving down the road and I
say, you know, we ought to turn left here.
And you say, yeah, we ought to turn left here.
Well, I might think that we ought to turn left here because that's going to be a
quicker way to get to our destination. But you might think that we ought to turn
left here because that's going to be a more beautiful view, and you'll be able
to look out on the hills. But we can agree that we ought to turn
left here. Because we both agree that turning left
meets the standards. Even though my standards are efficiency,
and getting there quickly and your standards are aesthetic, and getting
beautiful views. So if you can get more people to agree to
your premises, simply by saying, this health care plan will be good for the
country, without saying exactly how it's going to be good.
Then you've avoided people disputing your objections because they can agree to it,
since they can use their own standards to determine whether it's good or not.
And that can be yet another way to avoid the skeptical regress.
Notice, that evaluation can occur at a lot of different levels.
We have some words that are very abstract like, good and bad, and ought and ought
not, should, should not, right, wrong. And those words can be used in a lot of
different contexts. You can have the wrong investment or a
good investment or an investment that you ought to make.
But you can also drive on the right path, or a bad path, or a way that you ought
not to go. And so, you can have navigational
standards, and economic standards, but they can all be expressed by these really
general, and abstract, evaluative words like, good and bad, and right and wrong,
and ought and ought not, and should and should not, and so on.
But other evaluative words are much more specific.
Now, for example you can call a painting beautiful or ugly.
But you don't call fertilizer beautiful or ugly.
You would never say that a stock is beautiful or ugly.
They're just not the kind of thing to be evaluated in that way.
So an evaluative word like beautiful or ugly.
Is more specific. It only applies to a small range of
things. Whereas other words apply, like good and
bad, apply to almost anything. Here's another example, cruel or brave.
A person can be cruel or brave. But you can't say that a painting is
cruel or brave or a desk is cruel or brave.
Or a chair is cruel or brave. A chair might be comfortable.
But, a painting's not comfortable. And a soldier's not comfortable.
Soldiers are brave or not, chairs are comfortable or not.
But chairs are not brave or not, and soldiers are not comfortable or not.
So these evaluative words, like brave or cowardly, and beautiful or ugly, or
comfortable or uncomfortable apply only to limited ranges of things rather than
to, just about anything. So we have very general or abstract
evaluative words. And we have more specific or concrete
evaluative words. And, of course, which ones are specific
or concrete will vary. Some are more concrete than others.
It's not an absolute dichotomy but some words that are evaluative really will
apply to almost anything and other words apply to a more limited class and they
vary on how limited that class of things that they apply to will be.
So, you might ask, why are all these words evaluative words?
Well think about it, if you want to explain a more limited evaluative word
like beautiful, you want to explain what it means.
You need to. Defined it in terms of the more general
words like good. If you want to say it's beautiful, that
kind of means looks good. And no, that's not quite right, but
basically when you want to define the word beautiful, you need to cite one of
the more general words, good, and then cite the specific way in which it's good,
namely the way it looks. And when you want to say an economic word
like bargain. Bargain means a good price.
It sells for a good price. And a good price is a low price.
So, when you define what a bargain is, you need to cite the word good in order
to define bargain. So the relation between these very
general. Evaluative words and the more specific
evaluative words that makes them all evaluative is that you need to define the
specific evaluative words in terms of the more general ones.
So it all comes down to what makes something evaluative is it's connection
to what's good or bad, or right or wrong, or what ought or ought not to be done, or
should or shouldn't be done, and so on. Now the trickiest cases of evaluative
words are. Words that are contextually evaluative.
They don't actually get defined by good or bad or right or wrong, as their
general meaning. But they do suggest an evaluation in a
particular context. Let me give you an example of what I
mean. A conservative politician might criticize
her opponent by saying. Well his policies are way too liberal.
Now, by calling them liberal, is that a criticism?
Well, she intends it as a criticism. But, does the word liberal mean that it's
bad? Not really, if you think about it.
Because the opponent might say, I'm proud to be a liberal.
Being liberal's good. Yes, it's liberal.
So what? Yes, it's liberal.
Nothing wrong with that. The word liberal by itself doesn't mean
that it's bad. Even though the conservative thinks that
things that are liberal are bad. So that word liberal is not evaluative in
the strict sense. Because it doesn't get defined by the
words good or bad, or right or wrong, or should or should not.
It's only evaluative in the context. It suggests an evaluation because of the
assumptions of the speaker. But it doesn't in and of itself mean that
anything is bad, or good for that matter. Because of this difference we will call
language evaluative only when it's openly and literally evaluative.
So that it gets defined in terms of words like good or bad, or right or wrong and
not when it's merely contextually evaluative.
That is, in the context, given the assumptions of the speaker, this person
means to be suggesting an evaluation. If they're not openly saying this is good
or bad or right or wrong then. They're not really using what language
that we will call evaluative. But there were a couple of tricky
examples that are worth bringing up. Okay?
You might think that if you take two good things and put 'em together it gets even
better. And when you add a bad thing to a good
thing it makes it worse. At least that's the way it usually works.
But notice that when you say something's good that suggests it's good.
But when you say, eh, it's pretty good. Then you just added pretty, which is
something good to the word good. But, pretty good, it's not really any
better than, good. It might even be worse.
But then you can add a negative word in the middle.
Yeah. That was pretty darn good.
Well, that means it's very good. So, you've actually taken a negative
word, darn, and put it in the middle of two positive words, pretty and good.
And made something that means very good. So, you really have to think carefully
about exactly what the language means. It's not going to be a simple formula of
adding and subtracting goods and bads to figure out whether the language is
evaluative. Now, another word that's surprising is
the word to. I like spicy food so, when I say this
food is spicy. That's good.
Or at least it's neutral. To say it's spicy to me means I'm
probably going to like it. But notice that if we just add that
little word too, if I were to say this food is too spicy, that means it's bad.
The little word too takes a positive evaluation, or sometimes just something
that's neutral, and makes it bad. So the word too is actually a negative
evaluative word because it turns what was neutral or positive into something bad.
It moves it in that negative evaluative direction.
So it's a negative evaluative word. So is there anything wrong with using
evaluative language? No.
Some people seem to think that you shouldn't evaluate at all, you should
just describe. But, they're just kidding themselves.
Try going through life without deciding what's good or bad, or right or wrong, or
what you ought or ought not to do. You can't really live your life without
making evaluations at some point. So it's a mistake to think that
evaluation is always bad. Of course, when you do evaluate, it's not
like saying yea Duke. You have to give a reason.
So you should think about the standards that you're applying and why they apply
to this case. That's going to be your reason for
evaluating the thing as good or bad. Now it's often going to be hard to come
up with the exact standards that you're applying.
Because people tend to think of things as good or bad without getting very specific
about what the standards are. So you're not always going to be able to
tell people what your standards are. And when you ask them, they're not always
going to be able to specify what their standards are.
But it's still going to be a useful exercise, whenever you make an
evaluation, to think about why you think this thing is good or bad or right or
wrong. What are the standards that you're
applying? And when somebody disagrees with you, to
ask about what their standards are, so that you can understand where the
disagreement is coming from. Although evaluation can be very useful
and legitimate, it can also be dangerous. Because some people use evaluative terms
without reasons. Let's call that slanting.
You slant when you use an evaluative word and don't give any justification for that
use of the word. So you might call somebody an idiot or
queer, and you're using an evaluative word, or at least you take it to be
negatively evaluative. And you haven't given any reason why
there's anything wrong with what you're calling that nasty word.
Now, that's slanting if you don't have any reason.
And that can be terribly illegitimate. When do people do it?
Well, they typically do it when they don't have any reason.
If you don't have any reason for your evaluation, you just use some nasty name,
like you idiot. And, so when people start using language
like that, when they start slanting, then that's a good indication to you as a
critic that that's the point at which their argument is probably weak.
They're using that kind of language to paper over cracks, as I put it before, in
their argument so as to hide what's the real weakness.
So we can use evaluative language in arguments, and how it gets placed at
certain points to signal where the weaknesses and the strengths in the
argument are. So now, what we've got is, we've got
argument markers, we've got assuring terms, guarding terms, discounting terms,
evaluative language. And in the next few lectures, we're going
to look at a general technique that looks at all those different types of language
and uses those different categories to analyze some real passages that we found
in newspapers. But before that, let's do a few
exercises, just to make sure that you understand evaluation.